Chapter 3 - The Offer at the Top of the Stairs
The staircase to Marin’s apartment contained nineteen steps divided into two flights, with a green-painted iron rail whose paint had peeled away in patches. The knock came in the middle of the morning—three evenly spaced knocks. Not the knock of a neighbor, nor the hesitation of a deliveryman. It belonged to someone accustomed to waiting very little outside other people’s doors.
Marin had been sewing the strap back onto the cloth bag she had prepared for the day she went into labor. She put down the needle and opened the door.
Cassian Raldi nearly filled the doorway. He wore a dark gray sweater beneath his coat, and melted snow had soaked two dark patches into his shoulders. Wet wool and something dry, woody, clean, and expensive entered with her. He stepped across the threshold without asking, and the small room seemed to shrink.
His eyes moved openly across the water stain spreading like a map above the kitchen corner, the aluminum pot collecting drips beneath it, the tape sealing the cracked window frame, and the seventeen worn dictionaries arranged on the sill, several repaired with adhesive paper. He commented on none of it. That absence of pity made Marin feel more exposed than pity would have.
She sat. She did not invite him to do the same.
Cassian told her she was going to work for him.
Marin said she did not accept work from a man after hearing what she had heard him say at the banquet.
“Good. I’m not looking for someone agreeable.” He put a folded sheet on the table. “The number is inside.”
Marin did not open it. “What do you need translated?”
“Recordings. Three dispatch ledgers. Mixed languages. Dockside slang. Three people already gave up.”
“Why not give them to your lawyers?”
“Because I’m not sure who my lawyers are working for.”
The sentence remained between them. For the first time, Marin saw something in Cassian’s eyes that she had not expected: weariness. The weariness of someone who had not allowed himself to sleep deeply for a very long time.
“Why me?”
“Because you hate me.” She waited. “Someone who likes me will translate what I want to hear. Someone afraid of me will translate what they think I want to hear. You’ll tell me the warehouse is burning while you’re still handing me the fire extinguisher. That’s exactly the person I need.”
Marin remained silent long enough for him to expect a refusal. “All right. But on my terms.”
Cassian raised an eyebrow.
She would not work in his house. She would not work with anyone standing over her shoulder. She required a private room with a door she could lock from the inside. Half the payment in advance—by cashier’s check, never cash. And if the recordings contained something he did not want to hear, she would read it anyway, and he would still pay her in full.
People did not give Cassian Raldi conditions. No one had done so in years. To his surprise, irritation was not his first reaction. “A car will come tomorrow morning.”
At the door, he paused. “The building on my side of town is tall and cold. Dress warmly.”
“I’m used to the cold.”
After he left, Marin listened to his footsteps descend all nineteen stairs. Only after the downstairs door slammed and the engine faded did she open the folded sheet. The number written inside exceeded everything she had earned during the previous three years, since she had last been allowed to stand in a courtroom. She felt nothing.
May you like
Marin opened the desk drawer and took out the worn envelope from Raldi Freight and Cold Storage. She placed it beside Cassian’s offer. The same embossed name appeared in the upper-left corner of both pieces of paper.
She did not need his money. She needed the truth about her husband’s death.
